The Oregon Trail was a 2,170-mile (3,490 km) east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the current states of Idaho and Oregon.
The Western United States is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term the West changed. Before about 1800, the crest of the Appalachian Mountains was seen as the western frontier. The frontier moved westward and eventually the lands west of the Mississippi River were considered the West.
U.S. Route 395 is a U.S. Route in the western United States. The southern terminus of the route is in the Mojave Desert at Interstate 15 near Hesperia. The northern terminus is at the Canada–US border near Laurier, where the road becomes Highway 395 upon entering British Columbia, Canada. Before 1964, the route extended south to San Diego. I-15, I-215, and California State Route 163 replaced the stretch of 395 that ran from San Diego to Hesperia through Riverside and San Bernardino. "Old Highway 395" can be seen along or near I-15 in many locations before it branches off at Hesperia to head north. It has also been referred to as the "Three Flags Route."
The Gold Country is a historic region in the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, that is primarily on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. It is famed for the mineral deposits and gold mines that attracted waves of immigrants, known as the 49ers, during the 1849 California Gold Rush.
Arbutus menziesii or Pacific madrone, is a species of broadleaf evergreen tree in the family Ericaceae, native to the western coastal areas of North America, from British Columbia to California.
The California Trail was an emigrant trail of about 1,600 mi (2,600 km) across the western half of the North American continent from Missouri River towns to what is now the state of California. After it was established, the first half of the California Trail followed the same corridor of networked river valley trails as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, namely the valleys of the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater rivers to Wyoming. The trail has several splits and cutoffs for alternative routes around major landforms and to different destinations, with a combined length of over 5,000 mi (8,000 km).
Makiki is an area of Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, located northeast of downtown Honolulu, stretching east to west from Punahou Street to Pensacola Street and north to south from Round Top Drive/Makiki Heights Drive to Lunalilo Freeway. Punchbowl, an extinct tuff cone, and Tantalus overlook the Makiki.
Donner Pass is a 7,056-foot-high (2,151 m) mountain pass in the northern Sierra Nevada, above Donner Lake and Donner Memorial State Park about 9 miles (14 km) west of Truckee, California. Like the Sierra Nevada mountains themselves, the pass has a steep approach from the east and a gradual approach from the west.
Norman Clyde was a mountaineer, mountain guide, freelance writer, nature photographer, and self-trained naturalist. He is well known for achieving over 130 first ascents, many in California's Sierra Nevada and Montana's Glacier National Park. He also set a speed climbing record on California's Mount Shasta in 1923. The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley has 1467 articles written by Clyde in its archives.
The Hastings Cutoff was an alternative route for westward emigrants to travel to California, as proposed by Lansford Hastings in The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California. The ill-fated Donner Party infamously took the route in 1846.
Heyday is an independent nonprofit publisher based in Berkeley, California.
Peter Lassen, later known in Spanish as Don Pedro Lassen, was a Danish-born Californian ranchero and gold prospector. Born in Denmark, Lassen immigrated at age 30 to Massachusetts, before eventually finally moving to California. In California, Lassen became a Mexican citizen and received the vast Rancho Bosquejo from Governor Manuel Micheltorena. He is best known as the eponym of Lassen County, California, Lassen Peak, and Lassen Volcanic National Park.
William Earl "Smoke" Blanchard was an American mountaineer, climber, trekking leader, guide, world traveler, writer, Buddhist, and a truck driver. He was born in Montana and moved to Portland, Oregon in his early childhood and discovered a love for mountains in the shadow of Mount Hood. He spent his formative mountaineering years on Mount Hood during the mid to late 1930s. He was present during the "Golden Age" of climbing on Mount Hood, and under the tutelage of Gary Leech became a proponent of climbing solo and establishing new routes on the mountain.
The Stephens–Townsend–Murphy Party consisted of ten families who migrated from Iowa to California prior to the Mexican–American War and the California Gold Rush. The Stephens Party is significant in California history because they were the first wagon train to cross the Sierra Nevada during the expansion of the American West. In 1844, they pioneered the first route at or near what was later named Donner Pass. The crossing was a year before the third expedition of John C. Fremont, two years before the Donner Party, and five years before the 1848–49 Gold Rush. Three other known European exploration crossings of the Sierra Nevada had previously occurred at points south of this however, including Fremont's second expedition the previous winter, at Carson Pass.
Prunus subcordata, known by the common names Klamath plum, Oregon plum, Pacific plum and Sierra plum, is a member of the genus Prunus, native to the western United States, especially California and Oregon.
Isaiah West Taber was an American daguerreotypist, ambrotypist, and photographer who took many pictures of noted Californians, which he donated to the California State Library "that the state may preserve the names and faces, and keep alive the memory of those who made it what it is." He was also a sketch artist and dentist. His studio also produced a series of stereoscopic views of west coast scenery.
Joseph Smeaton Chase was an English-born American author, traveler and photographer. He has become an integral part of California literature: revered for his poignant descriptions of California landscapes. An Englishman who toured the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountains in 1915 with his burro, Mesquit, Chase published poetic diary entries detailing his escapades through the Sierra Nevada mountains and California desert.
Trailblazer is an independent British publisher of travel, trekking and railway route-guides. Started by author Bryn Thomas in 1991, it was originally synonymous with the Trans-Siberian Handbook, which for years was the only guide to crossing Asia by rail and remains much respected. Another early success was Mark Elliott and Wil Klass's Asia Overland (1998).
Sierra Club Books was the publishing division of the Sierra Club, founded in 1960 by then Sierra Club President David Brower. Volumes intended for club members had been published prior to 1960. In addition, books under their name had been published before 1960, but done through already established publishers, as was the case with This Is Dinosaur, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Their first in-house book, volume 1 in the Exhibit Format series, was This is the American Earth, published in 1960. In 1962, they introduced color photography to the series with the publication of In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World with photographs by Eliot Porter and Island In Time: The Point Reyes Peninsula with photographs by Philip Hyde. The series won the 1964 Carey–Thomas Award for creative publishing, by Publishers Weekly. Fifty thousand copies were sold in the first four years, and by 1964 sales exceeded $10 million. Soon they were publishing two new titles a year in the Exhibit Format series, but not all did as well as In Wildness. The books were successful in introducing the public to wilderness preservation and the Sierra Club, but lost money for the organization, some $60,000 a year after 1964. Paperback reprints of many of the Exhibit Format books were published by Ballantine Books. After David Brower left the Club, the books program moved to New York City, then back to San Francisco under the leadership of Jon Beckmann. During Beckmann's tenure from the mid-1970s until 1994 the program expanded and diversified considerably, publishing books by established and emerging authors such as Wendell Berry, Robert Bly, Galen Rowell, and David Rains Wallace as well as field guides, fiction, poetry, and books on environmental activism, such as the Sierra Club Battlebooks. Many Sierra Club books were produced by the Yolla Bolly Press run by Jim and Carolyn Robertson in Covelo, California. The program continued for two decades after 1994, first under Peter Beren, the former marketing director, then under Helen Sweetland, the former children's books editor. The press closed in 2014. The Club continues to publish the Sierra Club Wilderness Calendar and the Sierra Club Engagement Calendar annually, which are perennial bestsellers. They are distributed to the book trade by Publishers Group West.
In the American Old West, overland trails were built by pioneers and immigrants throughout the 19th century and especially between 1829 and 1870 as an alternative to sea and railroad transport. These immigrants began to settle much of North America west of the Great Plains as part of the mass overland migrations of the mid-19th century. Settlers emigrating from the eastern United States were spurred by various motives, among them religious persecution and economic incentives, to move to destinations in the far west via routes including the Oregon Trail, California Trail, and Mormon Trail. After the end of the Mexican–American War in 1849, vast new American conquests again enticed mass immigration. Legislation like the Donation Land Claim Act and significant events like the California Gold Rush further lured people to travel overland to the west.
